Literature in the Digital Age: From Close Reading to Distant Reading
As we make sense of what we read, we construe meaning using the cultural technique of interpretation. Only rarely do we actually reflect this process: what are the means that help us understand literary texts? How does interpretation work? And how has our increasing use of electronic devices changed the way we read and interpret literature?
Created at the University of Basel and hosted on the FutureLearn platform, the free six-week online course “Literature in the Digital Age: From Close Reading to Distant Reading” addresses these questions as it introduces you to a variety of ways of interpreting literary texts. We look into time-tested methods such as close reading and (literary-)historical contextualization and also address more recent practices such as surface reading and computer-based hyper reading and distant reading.
These are the six weeks of the course:
1. How We Read Today
2. Close Reading
3. Hyper Reading & Social Reading
4. New Historicism
5. Distant Reading
6. Surface Reading & the Materiality of Communication.
The course can be accessed here: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/reading-digital/4.